The Doll
by 1diagonalscar
Summary: Leon collects dolls. AU


Leon sits in the hard straight-backed chair. In front of him on the hard wooden table is a single photograph, creased and worn from incessant handling, the emulsion cracking, the image dull beneath a patina of smeared finger marks. On either side of it, Leon's hands, flat against the bare wood, fingers occasionally curling against the grain as he tenses. The room is silent, apart from the sound of breathing and of Leon's sharp gasps as he digs his fingernails into the tabletop.

Silent, apart from when the thing behind him speaks.

_Please_, and he can feel its long fingers toying with his hair. _Turn around_.

In front of him on the table a single photograph, creased and tattered, and he's held it in his hands so often, and run the tips of his fingers across its surface so many times and pressed it to his lips so much that he knows its look and feel and taste almost as well as he knows himself.

_Please_, it says again, and its voice is filled with so much longing that Leon feels like he is being dragged into the sky by a thousand wild horses. _Just turn around_, and Leon can feel its fingers, as cold as dead bone, on his face, on his lips, on his eyes, its mouth and nose pressed against the back of its head. _Why won't you turn round?_

A single photograph, of what looks like a ball-jointed doll, and at first that is what Leon had thought it was, all falling hair and lambent-eyed and face tapering away to nothing. Just a stupid ball-jointed doll, and when the photograph had come flapping out of the book to curl at his feet like a wounded bird he had given it a single cursory glance before folding it in two and using it to mark his place. Just a ball-jointed doll, polyurethane resin, late twentieth century, style of Volks. Nothing at all to catch the interest of a serious collector like him.

_Please_, the thing behind him sighs, and he can feel its breathless mouth against his ear. _Turn around_.

- x X x -

Among collectors, Heinrich Kramer's _De Simulacra Pupae et Carpi _was the stuff of legend. All that was known of its author was that he was a Bavarian philosopher who had fled to Ghent at the end of the fifteenth century, where he had been burnt alive in the Korenmarkt by the doors of St Nicholas' Church, the tolling bells unable to drown out his screams and curses as the flames licked the flesh from his face. The burghers of Ghent had burnt him on a pile of his own books, ridding the world - as they put it - of his evil in both word and deed, and as Kramer had died so had all knowledge of the contents of his reputed masterwork.

For three hundred years knowledge of the book had receded, until most people believed that it was simply a fairy tale. And then a handwritten English translation entitled _Treatise on Dolls_ had been found in the library of Jacquette-Célestine Davezac. After The Terror had ended, her books had entered the Bibliothèque Nationale, and there the _Treatise on Dolls_ had remained. When the library moved to the Rue de Richelieu in 1868 the book did not, and once again it receded into rumour and speculation.

- x X x -

It was really just a bogeyman story, an urban legend, something to scare novice collectors at post-Convention parties. Leon had been hearing different versions of it for a decade, and knew collectors in their eighties who could remember having been told it when they were boys. Under the varying details and elaborations the basics of the story were always the same. Heinrich Kramer had been an alchemist and he had succeeded in bringing inanimate things to life. _De Simulacra Pupae et Carpi_ was a manual on how to make living dolls. Kramer - so the story went - had perfected his process over many years, and it was the growing number of at first very imperfect but increasingly successful results that had led to him having to flee from Bavaria. According to the story, he had destroyed all of his creations except the last, and that one he had taken with him to Ghent.

"What happened to the doll?" the scoffing collector would inevitably ask.

"No-one knows. But some say that old Kramer turned it loose before the mob took him, and that it got away. Four hundred years old now, and as young as the day it was created. Some say that it's out there still, somewhere, looking for Kramer. Some say that it's drawn to single men who live among dolls - like Kramer did. That it hunts them down, thinking they're him, looking for the one thing that no-one will give it."

"What's that?" Leon can remember having asked the question himself, wanting the old fool who had cornered him at the bar to shut up and go away.

The old man had fixed him with a watery eye. "Death."

"Death? So why will no-one kill it?"

The old man had looked at him again, pityingly. "Would you, then? A doll that was immortal and youthful and perfect? And _alive_. Is that what you'd do to it? Kill it?"

Leon had shrugged. "So what happens when you don't?"

The old man had looked at him in silence for a moment before wandering away, shaking his head sadly. And Leon, like so many young collectors before and since, had gone home to his dolls and that evening, for the first time ever, had felt their eyes following him as he moved around the house, and that evening, for the first time ever, he had locked his bedroom door.

- x X x -

_Please_, the thing behind him says again, and Leon feels its chill hand against his throat, his adam's apple duck beneath its fingers as he swallows. _Look at me_. The hand slides down over the swell of his pectorals and his breath catches in his throat as gooseflesh blooms across the flesh of his chest and it buries its face in the angle of his shoulder and neck. He can feel its lips against his skin, as smooth and cool as glass, the scrape of its incisors as it opens its mouth, the pressure of its tongue probing into the hollows above his clavicle.

"Stop," Leon gasps. "Please stop."

_No_, and Leon gives an involuntary cry as it squeezes a nipple between its thumb and forefinger, through the cloth. _Not until you turn around._

In front of him, on the table, is a single photograph. A photograph of what looks like a ball-jointed doll. Leon stares at the picture, and even when he squeezes his eyes closed and tries to ignore what the thing behind him is doing with its fingers he can still see it. It is male, probably supposed to be a boy in his late teens although it is androgynous and ageless, pale yellow hair framing his delicate narrow face, all bone and shadow, skin the colour of paraffin wax, bruised eyes brooding under lowered brows, lips like a fresh scar. Impossibly perfect, and with nothing that appeals to the doll collector in Leon. And yet for the past days he has been able to think of nothing else, look at nothing else, dream of nothing else except this one impossible perfect doll.

_Please_, it says, pulling up the hem of his t-shirt, dragging its cold dead fingers across his tightening abdominals. _Please_. Not quite begging.

- x X x -

Odine wouldn't tell him where he had found the book, and at first Leon hadn't believed it. "Just come to the shop," the dealer had insisted, and Leon had heard something unfamiliar under the clipped German consonants and ingratiating tone. He was about to fly to Annapolis to view a collection of late eighteenth century Neopolitan Presepio figures, but Odine had brushed his protets aside. "No! You must come now! This book, I will not stay with it for long." Fear, Leon realised. What he could hear in Odine's voice was fear.

"No!" Odine had hissed, when Leon - standing amid the incredible clutter of objects that was Odine's shop - had reached out a trembling hand to open the book. "You will not read it here! Take it! You must take it and go!"

Leon had tried to protest, had tried to press money onto Odine, but the old man had shaken his head, wide eyed and frightened. "Just go! And tell no-one where you got it!"

- x X x -

The book was ancient, and quite obviously valuable, but Leon was a collector of dolls, not of books, so he hefted it up onto his kitchen table and turned the creaking cover back without a second thought. If he had thought about it at all, he had expected it to be Jacquette-Célestine Davezac's English translation, the _Treatise on Dolls_. But it wasn't. The heavy type on the title page read _De Simulacra Pupae et Carpi_ above an engraving of a man flanked by two smaller figures over the image of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor and the words _Aldus Pius Manutius cum gratia et privilegio, ut ex decreto Heinrich Kramer Venice MCDXC_.

Kramer's Latin original. Whatever else it was, it was priceless, and Leon suddenly felt a thin tendril of dread uncurl in his stomach. How could this be here? How could it even be? As he turned the pages, poring over the incomprehensible heavy black type, something slipped from between two of the leaves onto the floor. Almost without noticing what he was doing, Leon picked it up and slipped it into his jacket.

Early the next morning, once Leon had finally stumbled to his bed, he lay in the darkness, trying in vain to sleep, thinking about what he had read. Kramer's book was indeed an alchemical tract, and Kramer's obsession had been with the creation of life. As far as Leon could tell, Kramer had been in search of the secrets of the golem, and the first parts of the book had been filled with glosses on rabbinic lore "גלמי is _my unshaped form_ as Adam was when his dust was kneaded into a shapeless husk". Kramer had collected a huge rambling mass of this stuff, and Leon had struggled for hours to understand his endless references to a thing of extreme beauty and sunlike brightness whose skin was a bright garment, shining like his nails so that the angels in heaven were filled with wonder and awe at the sight of him. From his ramblings, it seemed that Kramer had believed that the key to attaining the ability to animate a golem lay in an ecstatic experience, the secrets of which were contained in the Jewish _Book of Formation_.

Leon had battled his way through a hundred pages of Kramer's tangled, obsessive language by this point and was struggling to keep his eyes open. About to close the book, he looked around for something to mark his place, and pulled the paper that had fallen out of the book from his pocket. Glancing at it, Leon frowned. It was a photograph, and to his exhausted eyes it looked like a a ball-jointed doll, polyurethane resin, late twentieth century, style of Volks. Shrugging at the incongruity, Leon folded the picture in two and stuck it in the book to mark his place. Just a ball-jointed doll. Nothing at all to catch the interest of a serious collector like him.

- x X x -

Leon sits in the hard straight-backed chair in front of the hard wooden table. The thing is behind him, saying nothing because it has its open mouth pressed into the angle of his shoulder and neck and he can feel its lips against his skin, as smooth and cool as glass, the scrape of its incisors, the pressure of its tongue probing into the hollows above his clavicle. One of its hands is chill against his throat, and the other is plastered against the exposed flesh between the hem of his t-shirt and the waistband of his jeans. Leon can feel the need pulsing out of it in waves, pushing him up out of the chair. Being next to it like this is like standing in the exhaust of a jet turbine, deafened and battered by the invisible blast. It is futile, trying to fight it, and Leon knows that before too long its fingers are going to tighten around his throat and choke the life from him, or that it is going to draw a blade across the jugular in his neck, hungrily sucking down the lifeblood the pumps relentlessly out of him. He can feel it trembling in its desperation, feels its fingers fumbling at the buttons of his jeans, gasps as it drags its hand across the taut cloth. _Please_, it says, lifting its mouth from his neck. _Look at me_.

- x X x -

When Leon wakes there are only two thoughts in his mind. One is that whoever had translated the _Treatise on Dolls _for Jacquette-Célestine Davezac knew enough Latin to see the obvious meaning, but not enough to catch the subtleties of the language. Every word in Kramer's book seemed to have multiple meanings, and while he slept his brain had deciphered its title. _De Simulacra Pupae et Carpi_ did translate as _Treatise on Dolls_, but that literal reading failed to catch the hidden sense of what Kramer's book was actually about. Another reading had occurred to him while he slept, one that he did not quite want to think about. Because if Kramer had wanted his book to simply be called _Treatise on Dolls_ he would have titled it _De Pupae_. Why use three different words for doll? Because reversed, his title said something quite different. As _Carpes pupa simulacrum _it meant _will you pick dream-figure doll_? _Will you pick phantom doll_?

The other thought is about the photograph that had fallen from the book. Leon makes himself a cup of coffee and sits down at his kitchen table, pulling the folded picture out from between the pages, unfolding it and ironing it flat beneath his fist.

It is a photograph, quite new, and at first glance it does look a little like a Volks Super Dolfie. It is male, probably supposed to be a boy in his late teens although it is androgynous and ageless, pale yellow hair framing his delicate narrow face, all bone and shadow, skin the colour of paraffin wax, bruised eyes brooding under lowered brows, lips like a fresh scar. Impossibly perfect, and with nothing that appeals to the doll collector in Leon. But there is something about it that isn't quite right, something about the finish of the face that makes him almost certain that what he is looking at isn't any sort of synthetic polyurethane resin. Frowning, Leon brings the photograph closer to his eyes, peering at the pale features of the doll, the falling hair, the lambent eyes, the face tapering away to nothing. For all the world it looks like porcelain, and the skin texture is realistic enough for it to be bisque rather than china.

What is it? Leon is very far from an expert on twentieth century dolls, but he knows an idiosyncrasy when he sees one. He knows that there are people who manufacture porcelain ball-jointed dolls - very expensive hand-made things - but as far as he can tell this isn't the work of any one of them.

Leon puts the photograph down and picks up his coffee mug. He is about to get himself some breakfast when he notices something else. In the photograph, the doll is dressed in a high-collared black vest with a heavy silver zipper, the arm nearest the front of shot bare from shoulder to gloved hand. The shoulder and elbow are both clearly visible, and at neither is there any sign of an articulation.

Whatever it is, it is a very fine piece of workmanship. Leon licks his lips, frowning slightly at the sudden dryness in his mouth. Perhaps it isn't a doll at all? Perhaps it is just a single piece figure, a plaster model very skilfully painted. Leon picks up the photo again, peering at it, wondering why his heart is suddenly racing. A very fine piece of workmanship... What is it doing in that book?

Leon flips the picture over, scanning the back, but there is just a string of letters and numbers that don't mean anything. Turning the picture over again, he looks at the doll - surely it is a doll? - wondering what it might be. And then, _where_ it might be, because suddenly Leon wants it. There is nothing about it that appeals to the collector of dolls in him, and yet he wants it more than he can remember ever having wanted anything. "A very fine piece of workmanship," he mutters to himself, trying not to feel his dick stiffening against his jeans.

- x X x -

The thing behind him has one hand under his chin, tipping his head back and up, trying to make him look at him. Leon has his eyes screwed shut, and can hear it pleading with him, begging him to turn round, to look at it. _Please_, it says, and its other hand is at Leon's groin, kneading his erection through the fabric of his jeans. _Please. Please. Please._

- x X x -

Odine won't answer his door, so Leon kicks it down. Odine won't tell him where he got the book, so Leon takes him by the throat and lifts him against the wall, watching grimly from inches away as Odine kicks and chokes and pleads and claws at the muscles tensing in Leon's arm. "Algh... alright..." Odine gasps, and Leon lowers him to the ground but doesn't take his hand away from his throat until Odine has given him the name. To his surprise, Leon recognises it. Fabian Demal is a collector of early twentieth century Italian felt salon dolls living in Chicago.

"Why do you so badly want to know?" Odine croaks, and Leon pushes the photograph towards him, watching the colour drain out of his face. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death", Odine mutters, crossing himself. Leon wants to know why Odine is so scared, but Odine won't say, and whatever it is that Leon has in his heart it isn't murder.

- x X x -

It is three days before Leon can get to Chicago, and he has moved through that time like an automaton unable to think of anything, look at anything, dream of anything except this one impossible perfect doll. The photograph is creased and worn from incessant handling, the emulsion cracking, the image dull beneath a patina of smeared finger marks and he has held it in his hands so often, and run the tips of his fingers across its surface so many times and pressed it to his lips so much that he knows its look and feel and taste almost as well as he knows himself.

By the time he gets there he also knows that Fabian Demal is dead. At the apartment building the concierge tells him how Demal had been found, throat cut and bloodless, sprawled across his desk inside his locked apartment, over a month ago. Leon hands the concierge fifty dollar bills until the man mutters "Christ, alright" and agrees to buzz him in.

Inside the apartment it is dark, the drapes pulled against the light, the power off. But Leon can feel it, pulling at him like a magnet at iron filings, and it is only a matter of minutes until he is standing in Demal's study looking at the thing he has been imagining looking at ever since he woke up four days ago with a Latin phrase in his head and a question about a photograph on his lips.

In the photograph it is beautiful. In reality it is beyond words. Leon reaches out with one shaking hand and sticks it under the thin cotton of his t-shirt, over the thick muscle of his chest, against the beating of his wild and hammering heart. Runs.

- x X x -

Leon sits in the hard straight-backed chair. In front of him on the hard wooden table is a single photograph, creased and worn from incessant handling, the emulsion cracking, the image dull beneath a patina of smeared finger marks. On either side of it, Leon's hands, flat against the bare wood, fingers occasionally curling against the grain . The room is silent, apart from the sound of Leon's breathing.

Beyond the photograph, lying flat on the table, is the doll. Leon has been sitting here for a time he has lost the ability to measure, staring at it, sometimes picking it up and moving its head or its limbs, but for the most part just looking at it, trying to understand how anything can be so beautiful. He can't work out what it is made from - not wood, not composition, not wax or porcelain, certainly not resin - or how it articulates, or how it is making him feel what he is feeling. Suddenly, he wants very much for it not to be there, this peculiar wonderful horrible thing, lying on his kitchen table, mocking him. It is only about two feet long, but it suddenly makes Leon feel very small and very stupid. What kind of idiot lets themselves be infatuated by a doll?

"Come on, then," Leon mutters. "Do something. Come to life."

- x X x -

It is dark when Leon wakes up. At first he doesn't know where he is, or why he is so stiff, but then he realises that he has fallen asleep in the kitchen chair. The moon is shining in through the window behind him, casting pale shadows across the table, bathing the photograph in mercurial light.

Leon is still only half awake when he realises that the doll is gone. He is fully awake by the time he realises that only one of the shadow figures on the table in front of him is his own.

- x X x -

"I can't," Leon says, through gritted teeth. "I can't do what you want. I can't kill you."

_Of course you can't kill me_ the thing laughs as it fumbles the buttons of Leon's flies open with stiff fingers. _How could you kill me? I'm immortal_. Leon's breath hisses through his teeth as it slips its hand into his jeans, lifting his head higher with the other, stroking the long length of Leon's throat.

"What do you want?"

_Open your eyes. Turn round. Look at me_, it pleads.

"But you'll kill me if I do."

_I'll kill you_, it whispers, both of its hands moving over his flesh, _if you don't_.

"I don't understand."

_Open your eyes. Turn round. Look at me. _

"But..."

_Do it. Please_. Begging now. _I need you to. I need you_.

"I don't understand, " Leon says again. "What do you want?"

_I want to live._

"How?" Leon can't think; tales of the golem and Kramer and the cursed doll tangled together in his mind; the almost unbearable feeling of the thing's fingers against him.

_Ecstasy_, the thing whispers, running its fingers up over Leon's chin into his mouth. _The scarlet or the white. Ultimate pain or ultimate joy._

Leon can't think, doesn't know what he is being asked. All he is sure of is _please, turn around, look at me_. "Alright," he mumbles, around a mouthful of fingers. "Alright." Clambers to his feet, sees the doll - life-sized now - take a step backwards before it pushes him back against the table and drops to its knees, taking Leon into its mouth.

"Wait!" Leon cries. "Who are you? What are you?" But the doll has its mouth full and can't answer.

- x X x -

Afterwards, they lie together, the doll's fingers - warm now, and supple - tangling in Leon's hair while Leon drinks the breath from its mouth, feels the heart beating beneath its ribs, the blood pushing through its veins.

"What just happened?" Leon asks, finally, in the pause when they rest.

_You gave me life_. The doll smiles.

"But..." Leon pauses. "Aren't you?"

_The Cursed Doll?_ The doll nods. _They gave me life, too. Like I said, the scarlet or the white, it makes no difference. Life is life._

"So you're not going to kill me?"

_I'm not going to kill you_.

"I don't think I'd mind now." Leon is almost surprised to hear himself say it, but the doll smiles again.

_I've existed for a very long time_, he says_, but not always alive. Kramer thought he created me, but he was a rather stupid man, for all his opinion of himself. Too stupid to realise that all the blood I drank from him could have been spared if only he could have loved me._

"So you killed him?"

_He grew scared_, the doll nods, _and was going to give me away. Like I said, he was stupid, so I watched him burn_.

"And Demal?"

_And Demal_. _And countless others. Most of them chose the red._

Leon is silent for a moment. Then "who are you?"

The doll smiles. _Who am I? I've had a hundred names. Hadrian called me Praelium. Kramer called me Nubis. Pick one._

Again, Leon is silent for a moment. "I didn't ask your name. I asked who you are."

_So you did. I can't tell you, although Kramer tried. What was it he called me? Shadows, plaything, flesh?_ Nubis, Praelium, a hundred names tucks a stray lock of hair behind Leon's ear.

Leon makes a small choking sound. _Shadows, playthings and flesh_. _Simulacrum pupae et carni_...


End file.
